Put on your Purple! Celebrating Women’s History Month

Do you know that the official coloration of Girls’s Historical past Month is purple?

Girls in each trade have been chipping away on the glass ceiling for many years, typically within the face of great challenges and discrimination. Do you know that the primary feminine prime minister was Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka in 1960? She was adopted by a collection of different competent girls who held excessive workplace, corresponding to Indira Gandhi (India-1966) and different girls who you’d have by no means recognized about until you googled Women Prime Ministers (a lot of whom are from Asia Pacific international locations). It’s subsequently fairly astonishing that it took a long time for the U.S. to elect its first feminine to carry excessive workplace with the election of V.P. Kamala Harris in 2020. Although she could not have gained the 2024 presidency, one factor stays true…the glass ceiling within the U.S. nonetheless wants breaking.

March is Girls’s Historical past Month and March 8^th Worldwide Girls’s Day. It’s a worldwide celebration of the social, financial, cultural, and political achievements of ladies. Are you curious about studying its origin story? Learn our earlier weblog submit on how Women’s History Month advanced over time. Your thoughts might be blown!

What Colours Symbolize Worldwide Girls’s Day and Why?

Worldwide Girls’s Day Colours

Purple, inexperienced and white are the colours of Worldwide Girls’s Day. Purple signifies justice and dignity. Inexperienced symbolizes hope. White represents purity. The colours originated from the Girls’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) within the UK in 1908.

What’s the Theme for Worldwide Girls’s Day 2025?

This 12 months’s theme is “Speed up Motion” and “For ALL girls and women: Rights. Equality. Empowerment.” The aim is to hurry up progress worldwide to attain gender parity.

Not Such Enjoyable Details:

• Do you know that in accordance with the World Gender Hole Report, on the present charge of progress, it’s going to take 132 years to shut the worldwide gender hole?
• Do you know that for each greenback earned by males, white, non-Hispanic girls earn 73 cents, black girls 64 cents, Latina girls 51 cents, Native American girls 52 cents and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander girls 80 cents, with some teams incomes as little as 49 cents?

Celebrating the Scientific & Social Achievements of Girls in Historical pastOn this weblog submit, I wish to rejoice a number of of the various girls in historical past who’ve made contributions within the areas of ladies’s rights, science, social justice, know-how, politics and tradition. Contributions made by girls in different areas, corresponding to medication, sports activities, publishing, movie, theatre, images, music and dance will observe in a subsequent submit.

 Marie Curie (1867-1934) based the science of radioactivity, found two new components, and was the primary individual to win two Nobel Prizes. Her work laid the muse for developments in fashionable physics and most cancers remedies.

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) thought to be the primary laptop programmer, her work on the analytical engine impressed future developments in computing, laying the muse for the digital age we stay in right this moment.

Rosa Parks (1913-2005) a pivotal determine within the American civil rights motion. She is finest recognized for her brave act of defiance on December 1, 1955, when she refused to surrender her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white passenger. This act sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, probably the most important occasions in American civil rights historical past.

Celebrating the Political & Cultural Achievements of Girls in Historical past

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) & Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-19020 collectively they revolutionized the political and social situation of ladies in American society, pushing for a wholesale social revolution that went past simply voting rights. Their partnership and friendship lasted for over 5 a long time, leaving an indelible mark on the battle for ladies’s equality in the US.

Christabel Pankhurst (1880-1958) a outstanding chief within the Suffragette motion, she strategically used vogue to advertise the trigger and problem destructive stereotypes about girls’s rights activists. Her method to decorate was each deliberate and influential in shaping the general public picture of the Girls’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). 

Coco Chanel (1883-1971) a French designer and businesswoman who dominated Parisian high fashion for practically six a long time. A pioneer for ladies’s rights and gender equality, Chanel was one of many first feminine designers to create sensible clothes for energetic girls. 

Mary Quant (1930-2023) her legacy is just not solely in her mini skirt & sizzling pants designs but in addition in her influence on cultural actions. She was a pacesetter within the “Youthquake” of the Sixties, a time period coined to explain the shift in cultural affect from the older technology to the younger.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) and Lorena “Hick” Hickok (1893-1968) shared a deep, intimate relationship that considerably impacted each their lives and American historical past. Their connection started in 1932 when Hickok, a revered journalist for the Related Press, was assigned to cowl Eleanor throughout Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential marketing campaign.

Eleanor was the longest-serving first woman of the US, throughout her husband’s 4 phrases as president from 1933- 1945. Hickok’s affect helped Eleanor turn into probably the most influential girls of the twentieth century, championing causes corresponding to human rights and democracy.

For extra about their 30-year relationship learn the ebook, Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Formed a First Girl by Susan Quinn.

What’s the Newest on the Equal Rights Amendment (NRA)? Will it Ever Get Ratified?

On January 17, 2025, President Biden declared his opinion that the Equal Rights Modification (which might explicitly prohibit intercourse discrimination) was the legislation of the land, nonetheless, sadly, his declaration had no formal impact.

As of March 2025, ERA’s standing stays unresolved, with ongoing debates concerning the validity of the deadline, post-deadline ratifications, state rescissions and its incapacity to obtain the required two-thirds supermajority within the Senate.Constitutional students and lawmakers proceed to debate potential paths ahead for the 28^th modification, which is much more motive to elect a feminine President. Girls know methods to get issues accomplished!